The Speech

Nicely delivered, and it remains inspiring to see an African-American conduct the rituals of the presidency. The First Lady was also full of obvious cheer, and her embrace of the young girl from South Carolina after the president referenced her touching letter was the best moment of the night.

I liked the pledge to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, the pay of all military and benefits for veterans, and hope that isn’t accomplished by taking a 280 ship Navy to 250, etc.

The trouble with the speech, of course, is that what the president promises to do simply cannot be done, because the costs are so staggeringly high that the economy cannot bear all or even most of them absent the sort of renewed economic growth that soaring tax rates will snuff out.

The problem with President Obama’s agenda is that it is built on serial fantasies, fantasies which ignore the real benefits of things such as nuclear power and oil exploration. The president’s talk was well phrased and beautifully delivered, and deeply disconnected from the realities of economic growth.

Congressional Democrats have the numbers to push through many of the things the president wants, but each concrete proposal will travel the same course as the porkulus traveled –from high flown rhetoric to disappointing legislative language to off-putting low and deceptive politics. The president’s negative ratings soared in one month, and that’s a trend that will continue because the American people continue to view government with suspicion and to resent the vast waste of tax dollars they have already seen on a scale never before witnessed in D.C.